Thursday, February 12, 2015

On March 21, the antiwar movement will return to Washington, DC for a massive rally against U.S. Wars

On
January 10, UNAC joined many other major antiwar organizations at a
meeting in Washington, DC where we planned for several days of action
around the date of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is time that
we are back in the streets in a big way. Please plan to join us,
organize buses and car pools and save the date. For areas that are too
far from Washington, DC, plan your own action in your area. End all
Wars at Home and Abroad! Join us!

Here's the schedule so far:

Wednesday, March 18: Peace gathering and fellowship.

Thursday, March 19th: Lobbying on Capitol Hill, followed by a tour of the war machine: homes and offices of war criminals.

Friday, March 20th: Afternoon and evening teach-in: Ending Current Wars, Ending the Institution of War.
This
event will examine ISIS and U.S. warmaking in Western Asia and
elsewhere; the damage militarism does to the natural environment,
economies, and civil rights; and how the war system can be replaced with
a peace system.

Saturday, March 21st: Protest at the White House, followed by march.

To join the Facebook event for Spring Rising: https://www.facebook.com/events/430232700485435
For more information, click here:http://nepajac.org/springrising.html

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Cancel the #DetroitWater Debt and Start Afresh

Sign the petition:

We call on the City of Detroit and the newly-formed
Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the existing debts of Detroit
Water and Sewerage customers and start afresh with simple, affordable
rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped clean.

Last
year, Detroit made international headlines when tens of thousands of
residents lost their access to water through an aggressive shut-off
program by the water department.

The city
of Detroit has endured decades of economic turmoil, drastic depopulation
and repeated mismanagement. The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department
(DWSD) is over $5 billion in debt (over $4,500 per family in the
metro Detroit area).To compensate, they have increased rates over 119%
in the last decade.¹Residents who fall behind on their bills risk water
shutoff, and in 2014 that’s exactly what happened to tens of thousands
of Detroiters.

The shutoff program didn't work,
and the DWSD collected less than 3% of the over $100 million currently
owed.² A large number of the families who entered into payment plans
last year are now defaulting on them yet again because they lack
sufficient income.

In contrast, a voluntary
bond tender offer initiated during the shutoffs allowed the city to
renegotiate high interest rates on municipal water bonds and save over
$250 million in interest fees for the city.³

The
bond markets know that Detroit's water debt is junk and the city will
unlikely ever be able to pay the current interest rates, which is why
Default Trends proclaimed Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD)
its "Biggest Default of 2014".⁴

Corruption in
the DWSD has been rampant, with former Department head Victor Mercado
currently serving an 8-month federal corruption sentence for "conspiracy
to commit extortion" by padding department contracts and rigging bids
that netted his business associates millions. Although many of those
contracts are now being scrutinized by the city's legal team, Detroiters
are still paying dearly for the fraud of past leaders.

The
overbearing Detroit water debt has a human side, too: it has pushed
Detroit into an outright humanitarian crisis. Rates of infectious
disease and sickness are up dramatically, leading the National Nurses
union recently to declare a 'Public Health Emergency' in Detroit.⁵The
water department is significantly under-staffed and water infrastructure
is crumbling, leading to leaks that cost taxpayers tens of millions
annually. The department is unable to address these time-sensitive
issues due to lack of funding, as it currently spends 46% of its
operating revenue on debt service to banks - the largest line-item by
far in its budget.

We call on the City of
Detroit and the newly-formed Great Lakes Water Authority to cancel the
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's existing debts and start afresh
with simple, affordable rates: all customer past-due balances are wiped
clean.

Detroit's existing
water/sewerage rate structure is highly-regressive and unaffordable for
too many families. We call on the city to implement the 2005 Water
Affordability Plan to ensure that no family pays more than the
EPA-recommended threshold for water, including "lifeline rates" for
essential quantities of drinking/bathing water.⁶

The
water department acknowledges that 90% of its operating costs are
fixed⁷, meaning they don't depend upon how much water is consumed by
users. Still, they charge usage-based rates that fluctuate dramatically
with weather (up to 18% decrease in usage) and with broader demographic
shifts in the region (2/3 of Detroit's population has left the city
since 1950). Creating a progressive rate structure based at least
partially upon a family's income - as is done with many public services
like streetlights, schools, libraries, etc - would more equitably
distribute the burden of operating a system relied upon by over 4
million people for essential drinking water.

The
Detroit Water Brigade has provided emergency relief and advocacy to
hundreds of families since June of 2014, including providing immediate
financial assistance to families currently without water.⁸We've seen
first-hand the disastrous effects of these harsh, debt-driven austerity
policies.

We pledge to escalate this
campaign in the coming months until we bring relief to the tens of
thousands of metro Detroit families living without water today and the
millions living precariously with unaffordable water rates.

In
1972 a young white prison guard named Brent Miller was fatally stabbed
inside Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as “Angola.” Although
no physical evidence tied Albert Woodfox to the crime, he was
immediately assumed to be guilty and placed in solitary confinement; 23
hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps
across. He was eventually convicted of the crime after trials
tainted with constitutional violations and other legal issues, and has
been held in solitary confinement, fighting to prove his innocence ever
since.

Albert believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert
King, were placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their
activism and outspoken critique of injustice. All three men were members
of the Black Panther Party and campaigned for better treatment, racial
solidarity, and an end to the brutal sexual slavery in prison. Woodfox,
Wallace and King came to be known as the Angola 3.

Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times - most
recently in 2013 on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection
of a grand jury foreperson. In late 2014, an appeals court upheld the
decision in Alberts favor, and on February 6, his lawyers filed for
bail. After years of the State of Louisiana appealing decisions in
Albert’s favor, It is critical that Governor Bobby Jindal show
leadership, and ensure that Albert’s cruel and unjust isolation is not
his legacy. April 2015 will mark 43 years since Woodfox was
first placed solitary - for a crime he maintains that he didn't' commit,
a claim that much of the available evidence supports. It is time for
the State to let the wisdom of the courts stand and ensure his release.

Amnesty International
http://act.amnestyusa.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1839&ea.campaign.id=35593&ea.tracking.id=Country_USA~MessagingCategory_PrisonersandPeopleatRisk&ac=W1502EAIAR2&ea.url.id=359128&forwarded=true

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL

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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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SHUT DOWN CREECH!

Mass Mobilization to Stop Drone Wars!

A Convergence For Peace in the Nevada Desert

Join
us March 4-6, 2015 at Creech Air Force Base, Indian Springs, Nevada,
for a national mobilization of nonviolent resistance to shut down killer
drone operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen, Somalia, and
everywhere. Sponsored by CODEPINK: Women for Peace, Nevada Desert
Experience , Veterans For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. CODEPINK will also
hold vigils daily on March 2nd and 3rd, prior to the official beginning
of this Creech Convergence For Peace, and welcomes everyone to join
them.

In 2005, Creech Air Force Base secretly
became the first U.S. base in the country to carry out illegal, remotely
controlled assassinations using the MQ-1 Predator drones, and in 2006,
the more advanced Reaper drones were added to its arsenal. Creech drone
personnel sit behind computers in the desert north of Las Vegas and
kill "suspects" thousands of miles away. Recent independent research
indicates that the identity of only one out of 28 victims of U.S. drone
strikes is known beforehand. Though officials deny it, the majority of
those killed by drones are civilians. In 2014, it was leaked that the
CIA's criminal drone assassination program, officially a separate
operation from the Air Force's, has been piloted all along by Creech's
super-secret Squadron 17.

Since 2009 dozens of activists
have been arrested for allegedly trespassing at Creech, in attempts to
stop the indiscriminate killing and burning of innocent people by
drones. At the trial of the "Creech 14," the first Americans prosecuted
for trespass at a drone base, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
testified that "to have a baby burn to death because of a 'no
trespass' sign would be poor public policy, to put it mildly." In a
time of burning children, the "no trespass" signs attached to the fences
that protect the crimes perpetrated with drones are not legitimate, and
they do not command our obedience. After all, it is the U.S. military
that is guilty of lethal trespassing.

The US drone program
is rapidly proliferating as air bases are being converted to drone bases
across the U.S. and abroad, but Creech remains the primary air base in
U.S. state-sponsored global terrorism. Creech is where the killer drone
program started--it is where we shall end it.

We must put an end to this desecration of our Mother Earth and all creatures who inhabit it.

We must put an end to the dehumanization of lives from Ferguson to Palestine to Pakistan.

We must close all foreign U.S. military bases. Money for human needs.

We must put an end to drone warfare, drone surveillance, and global militarization.

We must...SHUT CREECH DOWN!
More details to come soon!

Sign
up on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/events/1525740921010540/?context=create&previousaction=create&source=49&sid_create=3742154553#

Or contact:

Toby Blomé of Code Pink, 510-215-5974 (h)

Brian Terrell of VCNV and NDE, 773-853-1886

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Justice for Rasmea: All out for March 12!

On
March 12, Rasmea is set to appear once again in the Detroit courtroom
of Judge Gershwin Drain, this time for a sentencing hearing. We are
seeking letters to the judge requesting leniency.

For this round
of letters, we are NOT looking for a mountain of individual statements,
but rather letters from prominent individuals who represent broader
constituencies. We need you to work with leaders of faith-based, labor,
and community organizations, as well as student governments, student
organizations (national), prominent professors, and legislators in your
area to draft and submit letters.

Below you will find an outline
you can use to draft these letters, but it is important for the authors
to write them in their own voices. Letters should be submitted by
February 4 to justice4rasmea@uspcn.org.

Stay tuned! Keep sharing
Rasmea’s story and organizing fundraisers. Watch for calls for your
support as we prepare for sentencing and appeal. Our organizing is key
to winning #Justice4Rasmea.

UNAC
is the major national antiwar coalition in the U.S. today. The
existence of a United National Antiwar Coalition is vital and we need
your financial support to continue our work and to expand.

With
U.S. wars today accelerating and expanding globally in various forms –
from drone attacks on Yemen and Pakistan, never-ending wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, support to neo-fascists in Ukraine, and proliferating
Africom forces to threats of war for regime change in Syria – we have an
obligation to do whatever is possible to educate the public and to take
action to stop the carnage.

The wars abroad are
connected to global warming with most wars fought over energy resources
with the U.S. war machine as the largest polluter.

At
home, we see hugely growing income inequality, a militarized and racist
police force, mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos, and a massive
police state apparatus that includes global surveillance and laws to
quell dissent.

In spite of the trillions spent by the
U.S. corporate war government and its controlled media propaganda
machine to keep us in check, the people are fighting back. We’ve been
inspired and strengthened by the hundreds of thousands of new activists
taking to the streets of this country to stop police brutality, to build
Occupy encampments, to fight for decent wages, to demand full rights
for immigrants, to win marriage equality, to end global warming, to
demonstrate solidarity with the besieged people of Gaza, and to protest
unending U.S. wars.

UNAC has played an active, often
leadership role, in all of the antiwar and social justice movements of
our time. While most activists are focused on their particular issues,
the most vital role we can play is to connect the issues to their
source. All of the injustices and crimes we protest, stem from the
imperialist insatiable drive for expanding profit and control – and the
U.S. is the largest imperialist power militarily and economically. When
there should be plenty for all, only the obscenely wealthy benefit
while the rest of the 99% struggle just to survive.

Some of our recent major accomplishments:
· Initiated protest against NATO and 15,000 marched in Chicago in 2012.
·
Called for immediate actions against threats of war and coups directed
at Libya, Iran, No. Korea, Africa, Latin America, Ukraine, and
maintaining the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
· Organized a national tour for Afghan leader Malalai Joya.
· Sent representatives to international NATO protests and conferences.
·
Serve on the Board of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms
to act against Islamophobia , racist attacks on Muslims, and attacks on
our civil liberties.
· Participated in national efforts to organize anti-drone actions.
·
Campaigned to defend victims of government repression who speak out and
expose Washington’s crimes, including Rasmea Odeh, Mumia abu Jamal,
Lynne Stewart, Chelsea Manning, and the Midwest activists targeted by
the FBI.
· Produced national educational conference calls
featuring experts on topics such as U.S. intervention in Africa, the
destruction of Libya, the developing wars in Syria, and others.
·
Built an antiwar contingent in the massive New York City Climate Change
march and built Climate Change action in other cities around the
country.
· Helped organize protests against Israel’s attack on Gaza
·
Helped organize protests against the murder of Blacks by white police
and the militarization of the police forces in the U.S.

UNAC
has a history of bringing hundreds of activists together at large
national conferences to learn about the issues of the day, to discuss
the way forward and to vote on an Action Program for the coming period.

The
UNAC conference next May will bring activists from all the movements in
motion to cross-fertilize these struggles. We are particularly
dedicated to bringing young activists together to support and learn from
each other. For this, we need your help to offer subsidies to leaders
from Ferguson, from the border wars in the southwest, from the Native
Americans who are fighting against the pipelines ruining their lands,
from the Students for Justice in Palestine, and many others.

Please give generously so that we can continue our work to bring harmony and justice to the peoples of this earth.

You
can send a check to UNAC at PO Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or click the
button below to contribute on-line with your credit or debit card.

https://www.unacpeace.org/

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On Behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal,A Contribution Request

The message following is a forward from:
Rachel Wolkenstein
Sister, Advocate and Friend of the Extended Family

Samiya
“Goldii” Abdullah, a daughter of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal died
on December 17, 2014 after years of battle with breast cancer. Samiya
would have been 37 this January 9 and is survived by two young
daughters, Aiyanah and Aaiyah, affectionately known as Dolly and Puddy,
ages eleven and four.

Samiya was a remarkable woman. She was
accomplished as a musician, an activist and rapper on social justice,
particularly in the struggle for Mumia’s freedom. She devoured books and
education. During her long, often debilitating illness, Samiya finished
her Masters Degree in School and Mental Health Counseling from the
University of Pennsylvania with honors. She was dedicated to her young
daughters and wanted them to grow up loving each other as much as she
did her brothers and sisters. And she wanted her daughters to see Mumia
(called “Pop Pop” by them) walk out of prison and home with their
grandmother, Wadiya.

Samiya's active fight for Mumia's freedom,
began at the young age of four. Mumia wrote about this in “The Visit”
printed in Live from Death Row in 1994. This was recreated in the movie
"Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."

"My father is still
considered to be a dangerous individual … his mind is what they fear,
there is over- whelming evidence that would exonerate him of his
conviction.
"He is an innocent man and the commonwealth has always
known this, but being too Black, too smart, and too strong … The
government will silence anyone that possesses the power to open the
minds of the people."
—Goldii

Samiya’s strength, character and spirit were nurtured by Wadiya and Mumia and are being passed on to her daughters.

On
behalf of Wadiya Jamal and Mumia Abu-Jamal, this is a request for funds
to assist Wadiya for care of her granddaughters, Dolly and Puddy.

Donate Now
to fight the “gag” law!
go to:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protect-freedom-of-speech-keep-mumia-on-the-air

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Support Prison Radio

$35 is the yearly membership.

$50 will get you a beautiful tote bag (you can special order a yoga mat bag, just call us).

$100 will get the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary"

$300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

$1000 (or $88.83 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Take a moment and Support Prison Radio

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director, Prison Radio

PRISON RADIO

P.O. Box 411074 San Francisco, CA 94141

www.prisonradio.org
info@prisonradio.org 415-706-5222

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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson

Lorenzo Speaks Concerning Prosecution's Brief:
JANUARY
1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in
my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When
they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were
“defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or
Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid
evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in
this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys
general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers,
people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.

But,
guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it
be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney
General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the
Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head
detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t
deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or
that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.

Why
not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames
himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher
ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other
attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of
judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post
in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay,
he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot
honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get
the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing
to prove every point we’ve claimed.

The prosecution is
trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in
Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them
for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to
do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense
for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of
their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim
that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open
File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office.
If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to
the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?

They
say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning
on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it
is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the
record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only
witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged!
How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an
issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.

By
seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid
evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they
believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed
my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes
an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that
the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints
that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a
lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The
prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is
unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.

After
the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy
Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious
concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised
the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of
the evidence he left out to show Innocence.

Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
and social organizations.

On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval, repeatedly
told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr. Pinkney.” And
ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV. PINKNEY TO THE
‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led away in handcuffs
and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.

Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).

We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorneyRalph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & InjusticeSara Flounders – International Action Center

MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY

I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."

New Court Date on 4 Motions for Rev. Pinkney

TUES, FEB. 24 1pm Berrien County Court

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial evidence
was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the PGA
[Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration against a
world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack Nicklaus
Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The course was
carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the city of
Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County officials were
determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor Hightower, who
opposed a program that would have taxed local corporations in order to
create jobs and improve conditions in Benton Harbor, a majority
African-American municipality. Like other Michigan cities, it has been
devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The Benton
Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent charges to
stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist white
officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black city. Rev
Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian ministers do,
was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper column. This
outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense. Please write them to express your support for heroic
WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC
Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison.
It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide
support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They
need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political
prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly
unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to
release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison
sentence is a possibility at this stage.Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:Secretary of the Army John McHugh

101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101

The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200

The letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and
especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s
sentence is reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be unlikely to help

A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning has been
punished enough for violating military regulations in the course of
being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your authorityto reduce
Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.” Beyond that general message,
feel free to personalize the details as to why you believe Chelsea
deserves clemency.

Consider composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming
appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where
Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to
highlight the prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last
year’s trial at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!

"The
Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health
insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees,
high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial
insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health
care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the
trend, experts say. The
theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial
risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care
spending."

14) Residents of Brooklyn Housing Project Stay Wary After Officer Is Indicted
"But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang — coming
after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island declined to
indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men — only
underscored how capricious justice could be."

A team of Cuban doctors and nurses specialized in disaster
situations and serious epidemics currently stationed in West Africa
fighting the Ebola outbreak was nominated in Norway for this year’s
Nobel Peace Prize.

According
to official figures, 461 Cuban doctors and nurses belonging to the
brigade have been stationed in West Africa since October to help fight
the Ebola epidemic there, which has killed 8,921 people and infected as
many as 22,334, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Since
the virus was first detected in the Democratic Republic of Congo in
1976, 23 outbreaks have been reported in several countries. The most
recent outbreak began in Guinea, but spread to neighboring Sierra Leone
and Liberia, which is currently the most affected country.

The
Henry Reeve Brigade was created on Sept. 19, 2005, with over 1,500
members. Its first missions were in Guatemala and Pakistan, countries
that faced the consequences of a hurricane and a devastating earthquake,
respectively.

Cuba had also offered to dispatch the brigade to
the United States to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a move that
U.S. authorities rejected.

LOS ANGELES — For 50 years, the science fiction writer Ray Bradbury
lived and wrote at 10265 Cheviot Drive, a bright yellow stucco home
built in 1937 that is tucked away on a winding street in an eclectic and
charming, affluent neighborhood on the West Side of Los Angeles.

Or
rather, that was once tucked away. Early one January morning, a team of
demolition workers, armed with crowbars and backed by a bulldozer,
showed up to begin a methodical dismantling of this piece of history in
Cheviot Hills, fending off neighbors alarmed by the racket. By the end
of the month, all that was left were two chimneys and a few stucco
walls.The loss of the Bradbury home was the latest in a tidal wave of
teardowns that has spread across Los Angeles over the past two years.
Developers, seeing the potential for high profits in this
housing-starved region, have been bulldozing vintage homes in
middle-class enclaves — Arts and Crafts cottages, Spanish Mission-style
bungalows — to replace them with lot-filling, towering modern homes that
typically sell for over $2 million.

Fights over this kind of
redevelopment have broken out in communities across the nation, but the
battle has become particularly pitched in Los Angeles, with its rich
diversity of architectural styles, abundance of wealth and streets that
look like movie sets. This is in no small part because many of the most
striking neighborhoods here were built, or are lived in today, by a
sizable contingent of set designers, movie producers and actors.

For
builders, the teardown frenzy is a welcome sign of a recovering Los
Angeles economy. They see a market response to demands of people who
want bigger homes with the kinds of amenities that were not even
imagined when houses were built 80 years ago — media rooms, sprawling
bathrooms, elaborate kitchens.

“All of this comes down to a
matter of personal choice,” said Scott Ouellette, president of the Los
Angeles-Ventura chapter of the Building Industry Association of Southern California.
“Some people want a neighborhood to never change; other people want
larger, more modern housing. There needs to be some balance.”

But
the destruction of thousands of classic homes is disrupting and
dividing neighborhoods, raising alarm among civic leaders about
potentially irreparable damage to handsome, historic and architecturally
distinctive communities that they argue define Los Angeles as much as
Hollywood or Venice.

The phenomenon has left some homeowners
living under the shadow of looming block houses that push up against
their property lines. Often, the first warning that a neighbor’s home is
about to vanish comes from the beep-beep-beep of bulldozers that arrive
overnight and can turn a home into a pile of wood and stone by
lunchtime.

“At this point, we’ve reached a broad civic consensus
that mansionization is harmful to the character and livability of Los
Angeles,” said Shelley Wagers, head of the Beverly Grove Alliance,
a neighborhood group that has fought this type of development. “The
damage they do to our neighborhoods is irreversible. Our residential
neighborhoods are the heart of the city’s character.”

Under rising pressure from neighborhood groups, the Los Angeles City Council
is moving to toughen regulation of home construction — and destruction.
A law that was passed in 2008 in response to an earlier wave of
teardowns is now viewed as full of loopholes.

“This is already
out of hand, but it could clearly get a lot worse,” said Paul Koretz,
the City Council member pushing the legislation. “We are trying to
respond to it as quickly as we can.”

But the effort has been
slow, as the proposed changes are reviewed by city planners, fueling
suspicion among neighborhood groups about the influence of developers on
City Hall.

“This is not a complex process that should take two
years,” said Dick Platkin, an urban planner who used to work for the
city. “It could be done for three or four or five months if it was a
high priority, which it’s not.”

The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety
said it had issued 1,728 single-home demolition permits in 2014, up
from 1,323 the year before. By contrast, just 709 were issued in 2010.
The evidence can be seen in strolls through neighborhoods from Hollywood
to Hancock Park: Large new homes dwarf smaller cottages, dusty lots
stand where homes once did, and telltale green fences and Dumpsters are
set in front of houses.

At a time when Los Angeles continues to
struggle with homelessness and a lack of affordable housing, this
subject is dominating conversations in many neighborhoods.

“It’s
one of the hottest issues in the whole district,” said Teddy Davis, a
Democrat running for City Council who has pledged not to take developer
contributions. “I hear about it from Toluca Lake to Silver Lake, from
Sherman Oaks to La Brea-Hancock. It really rattles people: They feel
like here are these 100-year-old homes and they are gone in two hours.
And then they have a giant aircraft carrier parked next to their
homes.”Los Angeles has always been known for its tear-it-down,
build-it-up ethos, to the concern of preservationists. The intensity of
the current opposition has challenged the notion that this is a city
with little interest in preserving its past.

“The biggest issue in this is the loss of community character,” said Adrian Scott Fine, the director of advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation group.

Clark
T. Carlton, a screenwriter who lives in North Beverly Grove, said, “The
growing populist movement to save these neighborhoods of charming
prewar homes is evidence that Los Angeles is finally becoming a
world-class city and its people realize they do have a beautiful and
interesting history to preserve.”

Still, this is a debate about both the future of neighborhoods and the rights of property owners.

“Some
people like big ostentatious boxes — other people don’t,” Mr. Ouellette
said. “When you live in a neighborhood and own a property, whether it’s
for one year or 40 years, your rights are coequal. Neither of them
really have the right to tell the other what to do.”

The
opposition is far from unanimous. Many families want bigger homes,
particularly in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods with large families. Some
homeowners say they welcome developers who take down older, dilapidated
homes and replace them with sleek, modern homes that they argue increase
property values for all.

Whatever the historic resonance of the
Bradbury home — people were lining up to grab chunks of the yellow
stucco as mementos — it was hardly considered a work of architectural
distinction. It was purchased by a well-known architect, Thom Mayne, who
told the book blog Melville House that he viewed the home as banal and wanted to replace it with something architecturally distinct.

“There
are two camps. There’s one camp that doesn’t want to see a historical
home come down,” said David Roberts, 69, a retired businessman who lives
up the street from the Bradbury home. “The other camp says it’s O.K. to
build new things. We’re in the second camp.”

Mr. Roberts glanced at his wife, Sandy, and added a caveat: “Unless they build a monstrosity.”

A
generation ago labor unions were often a familiar feature of the
American workplace, but in private businesses across the country, unions
have been shrinking. Today fewer than one in 15 private sector workers
belongs to a union, compared with almost one in four back in 1973.

But
dwindling union participation in the private sector stands in stark
contrast with union membership among public sector workers, which rose
sharply in the 1970s and has been relatively steady since 1980 at around
35 percent. Overall union membership has fallen by about a half since
1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, driven entirely by the decline in the private sector.

The
causes of falling union participation are hard to pinpoint but may be
attributed to several factors, including the pressures of global trade,
technological change, the shift away from domestic manufacturing and a
tougher stance against unions from government and corporate leaders.

It
is probably no accident that the drop in union membership has occurred
as the incomes of many working Americans have stagnated. “The decline in
unions is a huge factor explaining what’s happened to middle-class
wages,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute,
a liberal think tank. He calculated it could account for one-third of
the growth in wage inequality for men and one-fifth of that for women
from 1973 to 2007.

Shrinking union participation affects the
broader work force, since unions tend to provide spillover benefits to
nonunion members. According to an article
written by Mr. Mishel and David Cooper, an analyst at the Economic
Policy Institute, employee compensation declined most in states like
Michigan and Ohio where collective bargaining also declined sharply.

“When
collective bargaining is strong in an industry, what you find is that
it raises nonunion employee wages too,” Mr. Mishel said.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

4) Insured, but Not Covered

"The
Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health
insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees,
high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial
insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health
care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the
trend, experts say. The
theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial
risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care
spending."

WHEN
Karen Pineman of Manhattan received notice that her longtime health
insurance policy didn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act’s
requirements, she gamely set about shopping for a new policy through the
public marketplace. After all, she’d supported President Obama and the
act as a matter of principle.

Ms. Pineman, who is self-employed,
accepted that she’d have to pay higher premiums for a plan with a
narrower provider network and no out-of-network coverage. She accepted
that she’d have to pay out of pocket to see her primary care physician,
who didn’t participate. She even accepted having co-pays of nearly
$1,800 to have a cast put on her ankle in an emergency room after she
broke it while playing tennis.

But her frustration bubbled over
when she tried to arrange a follow-up visit with an orthopedist in her
Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield network: The nearest doctor available who
treated ankle problems was in Stamford, Conn. When she called to
protest, her insurer said that Stamford was 14 miles from her home and
15 was considered a reasonable travel distance. “It was ridiculous —
didn’t they notice it was in another state?” said Ms. Pineman, 46, who
was on crutches.

She instead paid $350 to see a nearby
orthopedist and bought a boot on Amazon as he suggested. She has since
forked over hundreds of dollars more for a physical therapist that
insurance didn’t cover, even though that provider was in-network.

The
Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health
insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees,
high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial
insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health
care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the
trend, experts say.

The theory behind the policies is that
patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious
and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new
policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from
a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and
non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer’s ever-changing
list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.For
some, like Ms. Pineman, narrow networks can necessitate footing bills
privately. For others, the constant changes in policy guidelines —
annual shifts in what’s covered and what’s not, monthly shifts in which
doctors are in and out of network — can produce surprise bills for
services they assumed would be covered. For still others, the new fees
are so confusing and unsupportable that they just avoid seeing doctors.

It
is true that the Affordable Care Act has erased some of the more
egregious practices of the American health insurance system that left
patients bankrupt or losing homes to pay bills. Insurers can no longer
deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, for example. And
the new policies cap out-of-pocket spending so long as the patient
receives care within the plan. Most important, the act has offered
health insurance to an estimated 10 million Americans who did not have
any, often by expanding Medicaid or providing subsidies.

But by
endorsing and expanding the complex new policies promoted by the health
care industry, the law may in some ways be undermining its signature
promise: health care that is accessible and affordable for all.

“I’m
always curious when I read this ‘good news’ that health costs are
moderating, because my health care costs go up significantly each year,
and I think that’s a common experience,” said Mark Rukavina, president
of Community Health Advisors in Massachusetts.

While much of the
focus in the past has been on keeping premiums manageable, “premiums now
tell only a part of the story,” Mr. Rukavina said, adding: “A big part
of the way they’ve kept premiums down is to shift costs to patients in
the form of co-pays and deductibles and other types of out-of-pocket
expenses. And that can leave patients very vulnerable.”

Such
policies desperately need improvement, patients and professionals like
Mr. Rukavina say. But with the Republicans attacking the Affordable Care
Act at all turns, even political supporters seem reluctant to
acknowledge that it has some flaws. The narrative has been cast in black
or white: It’s working, or it’s a failure. The reality, of course, is
gray.

AT this point, we don’t have a good definition of
“affordable” — or how to measure it fully and fairly. Many studies show
that national health costs, while still rising, are not growing as fast
as they once were. But what does that mean for individual patients? So
far the research has yielded mixed results.

A study by the Commonwealth Fund
this month found that the rise in health insurance premiums in
employer-based plans had slowed in 31 states since the passage of the
Affordable Care Act (good news, right?). But premiums were still rising
faster than median incomes (hmm). More important, perhaps, the
researchers found that patients were paying more in health care expenses
than ever before, during a time of stagnant wages (not so great). In
fact, nearly 10 percent of median household income now goes to pay
premiums and deductibles, the study found. And that does not include
other kinds of health payments that patients now encounter, such as
co-pays and uncovered drugs or services.

A recent New York
Times/CBS poll found that 46 percent of Americans said they had trouble
affording health care, up 10 percentage points in just one year. Some of
the cost problems may ease as patients — now known as health care
consumers — learn what to expect and how to choose and navigate their
plans.

But other problems may be related to the process by which
the plans are created. Under the Affordable Care Act each state was
asked to select a benchmark plan as its standard. It had to cover
certain “essential health benefits” like maternity care and prescription
drugs; it had to have a defined actuarial value
depending on the level of plan. Silver plans, for example, had to cover
70 percent of charges, leaving consumers with 30 percent. But within
those parameters, competing insurers had leeway to set premiums,
co-payments and deductibles, and to create networks by negotiating with
doctors and hospitals. Naturally, they created policies that met the
core criteria while minimizing their financial risk.

Suddenly
there were hundreds of new insurance products that had never been tested
in real time. Their shortcomings are now playing out in various ways.

Alison
Chavez, 36, who is self-employed, signed up for a marketplace plan in
October 2013 that she hoped would be an improvement on her previous
plan. She had recently been given a diagnosis of breast cancer and was
just beginning therapy, so she was careful to choose a policy on the
Covered California marketplace that included her physicians.

But
in March, while in the middle of treatment, she was notified that
several of her doctors and the hospital were leaving the plan’s network.
She was forced to postpone a surgery as she scrambled to buy a new
commercial policy that included her doctors. “I’ve been through hell and
back, but I came out alive and kicking (just broke),” she wrote in an
email.Dr. Alexis Gersten, a dentist in East Quogue, N.Y., switched her
family and 11 employees to a new Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan for 2014,
after a previous small-business group plan was canceled. She bought the
plan through a broker, and says she was unaware that it was an
Affordable Care Act plan. When her son needed an ear, nose and throat
specialist, the nearest was in Albany, five hours away. Though her
cardiologist was on the network list, he said he did not take the plan.
She ended up driving an hour to see a new one. A dispute with the
insurer about how to count deductibles left her with a $457
pediatrician’s bill. This year she has chosen a new policy.

“People
may have a checklist when they buy insurance: First, premiums, then the
deductible — and those are pretty easy to understand because they’re
set dollar amounts,” said Lynn Quincy, associate director of health
reform policy at Consumers Union. But new policies demand different and
more difficult kinds of calculations, she said: “The terms are
unfamiliar, and figuring out networks is especially murky.”

Compounding
the problem is the lack of basic information to shop effectively. When
Andrea Greenberg, a New York lawyer, called the help line of Health
Republic to clarify the difference between two plans, she found herself
speaking to someone reading off a script in the Philippines. “I was
really outraged,” she said. “This is an important decision with
potentially dire consequences. It’s not like you’re choosing a sweater.”

Likewise,
it took many phone calls for Aviva Starkman Williams, a California
computer engineer with insurance through her employer, to determine
whether the pediatrician doing her son’s 2-year-old checkup was
in-network for 2015. Only three of the pediatricians in her doctor’s
six-person group were listed in her plan’s online directory, and since
her deductible had tripled from the previous year’s, she wanted to limit
her out-of-pocket payments.

The practice’s office manager
couldn’t tell her for sure. The insurer’s representative said he didn’t
know because doctors came in and out of network all the time, likening
the situation to players’ switching teams in the National Basketball
Association. “If you don’t have updated information, who does?” she
asked. “Isn’t it your job to know?”

Ms. Quincy said regulators
needed to do a much better job setting requirements and policing plan
practices and offerings, particularly provider networks. Few states have
clear standards and many rely on consumer complaints to ferret out
problems.

Last month, the California insurance commissioner, Dave
Jones, announced new emergency regulations concerning networks, noting:
“Health insurers’ medical provider directories have been inaccurate,
misleading consumers into signing up with a health insurer for access to
a doctor, specialist or hospital, only to learn that these medical
providers are not actually a part of the health insurer’s network.”

But
for now, patients are most often left to fend for themselves. When Amy
Moses, a tech entrepreneur in New York City, went online to select a
plan, she paid a relatively pricey $650 per month for a United
Healthcare plan to make sure her network included a longtime physician.
One month into the year, the doctor’s practice was bought by a hospital,
which then dropped the plan, so her doctor did as well. (A year later
the doctor was still listed in the network directory.)

She
discovered the change only when she contacted the physician for a
referral for an urgent outpatient procedure costing thousands of dollars
that had been recommended by an in-network surgeon. (Both the referring
doctor and the surgeon had to be in-network for coverage.) “I literally
had three days to find a new in-network internist and score an
appointment to get a referral, or cancel my procedure,” she said. “I was
stuck in insurance purgatory.”

For a continuing conversation about health care costs and pricing in the United States, please join our Facebook group, Paying Till It Hurts.

Elisabeth Rosenthal is a New York Times correspondent who is writing a book about the health care system.

DALLAS
— A block from the tourist-swarmed headquarters of the former Texas
School Book Depository sits the old county courthouse, now a museum. In
1910, a group of men rushed into the courthouse, threw a rope around the
neck of a black man accused of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old white
girl, and threw the other end of the rope out a window. A mob outside
yanked the man, Allen Brooks, to the ground and strung him up at a
ceremonial arch a few blocks down Main Street.

South of the city,
past the Trinity River bottoms, a black man named W. R. Taylor was
hanged by a mob in 1889. Farther south still is the community of
Streetman, where 25-year-old George Gay was hanged from a tree and shot
hundreds of times in 1922.

And just beyond that is Kirvin, where
three black men, two of them almost certainly innocent, were accused of
killing a white woman and, under the gaze of hundreds of soda-drinking
spectators, were castrated, stabbed, beaten, tied to a plow and set
afire in the spring of 1922.

The killing of Mr. Brooks is noted
in the museum. The sites of the other killings, like those of nearly
every lynching in the United States, are not marked. Bryan Stevenson
believes this should change.

On Tuesday, the organization he founded and runs, the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., released a report on
the history of lynchings in the United States, the result of five years
of research and 160 visits to sites around the South. The authors of
the report compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of “racial terror
lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

Next comes
the process of selecting lynching sites where the organization plans to
erect markers and memorials, which will involve significant
fund-raising, negotiations with distrustful landowners and, almost
undoubtedly, intense controversy.

The process is intended, Mr.
Stevenson said, to force people to reckon with the narrative
through-line of the country’s vicious racial history, rather than
thinking of that history in a short-range, piecemeal way.

“Lynching
and the terror era shaped the geography, politics, economics and social
characteristics of being black in America during the 20th century,” Mr.
Stevenson said, arguing that many participants in the great migration
from the South should be thought of as refugees fleeing terrorism rather
than people simply seeking work.

The lynching report is part of a longer project Mr. Stevenson began several years ago. One phase involved the erection of historical markers about
the extensive slave markets in Montgomery. The city and state
governments were not welcoming of the markers, despite the abundance of
Civil War and civil rights movement memorials in Montgomery, but Mr.
Stevenson is planning to do the same thing elsewhere.

Around the
country, there are only a few markers noting the sites of lynchings. In
several of those places, like Newnan, Ga., attempts to erect markers
were met with local resistance. But in most places, no one has tried to
put up a marker.

Efforts to count the number of lynchings in the
country go back at least to 1882, when The Chicago Tribune began
publishing each January a list of all executions and lynchings in the
previous year. The Tuskegee Institute began releasing a list in 1912,
and in 1919, the N.A.A.C.P. published what its researchers said was a
comprehensive list of lynchings in the previous three decades. In 1995,
the sociologists Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck researched the existing
lists, eliminated errors and duplicates, and compiled what many consider
the most accurate inventory to that time.

The report released
Tuesday says that the new inventory has 700 names that are not on any of
these previous lists, many of which Mr. Stevenson said were discovered
during the compilation of the report.

Professor Beck, who teaches
at the University of Georgia, has not reviewed the new list. But he
pointed out that, with racial violence so extensive and carried out in
so many different ways, compilers of lists may differ on what
constitutes a lynching; the new list, as opposed to some previous ones,
includes one-time massacres of large numbers of African-Americans, such
as occurred in Arkansas in 1919 and in Louisiana in 1887.

“If
you’re trying to make a point that the amount of racial violence is
underestimated, well then, there’s no doubt about it,” Professor Beck
said. “What people don’t realize here is just how many there were, and
how close. Places they drive by every day.”

Among Professor
Beck’s findings were that the number of lynchings did not rise or fall
in proportion to the number of state-sanctioned executions, underscoring
what Mr. Stevenson said was a crucial point: that these brutal deaths
were not about administering popular justice, but terrorizing a
community.

“Many of these lynchings were not executing people for
crimes but executing people for violating the racial hierarchy,” he
said, meaning offenses such as bumping up against a white woman or
wearing an Army uniform.

But, he continued, even when a major
crime was alleged, the refusal to grant a black man a trial — despite
the justice system’s near certain outcome — and the public extravagance
of a lynching were clearly intended as a message to other
African-Americans.

The bloody history of Paris, Tex., about 100
miles northeast of Dallas, is well known if rarely brought up, said
Thelma Dangerfield, the treasurer of the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter.
Thousands of people came in 1893 to see Henry Smith, a black teenager
accused of murder, carried around town on a float, then tortured and
burned to death on a scaffold.

Until recently, some longtime
residents still remembered when the two Arthur brothers were tied to a
flagpole and set on fire at the city fairgrounds in 1920.

“There
were two or three blacks who were actually around during that time, but
you couldn’t get them to talk about it,” Ms. Dangerfield said.

She
helped set up an exhibit in the county historical museum, the only
commemoration of the lynchings she knows of in a town with prominent
public memorials to the Confederacy. The prospect of a permanent marker
had not occurred to her.

“It would be a fight,” she said.
“Someone is going to have some resistance to it. But you know, I think
it wouldn’t hurt to try it.”

CHICAGO
— Gov. Bruce Rauner, the newly elected Republican who has often
criticized public sector unions, took his first step toward curbing
their power on Monday by announcing an executive order that would bar
unions from requiring all state workers to pay the equivalent of dues.

Mr.
Rauner, who faces a Democratic-controlled legislature with strong ties
to labor, took the unilateral step saying that he believed those fees
violate the United States Constitution.

“Forced union dues are a
critical cog in the corrupt bargain that is crushing taxpayers,” Mr.
Rauner said. “An employee who is forced to pay unfair share dues is
being forced to fund political activity with which they disagree. That
is a clear violation of First Amendment rights — and something that, as
governor, I am duty bound to correct.”Mr. Rauner, a former private
equity manager who became the state’s first Republican governor in more
than a decade, is following other Republican governors in the Midwest
who have aggressively taken on public sector unions in recent years.

Those
include Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who ended collective bargaining by
state workers by executive order; Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who led
efforts to cut collective bargaining rights for most public employees;
and Rick Snyder of Michigan, who signed legislation ending the
requirement that all workers in unionized workplaces pay union dues.

The
governor’s executive order affects about 6,500 of the state employees
who are not in unions but currently pay fees in lieu of union dues. The
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said that
about 42,000 state employees are represented by unions.

But labor
leaders say Mr. Rauner’s intent is far broader, aimed at shrinking
union membership in the future and diminishing labor’s power in
Illinois. Union leaders have described the fees, often called “fair
share” payments, as reasonable contributions from workers who, while
choosing not to be union members, still benefit from collective
bargaining agreements.

The order does not affect private sector
unions or state employees who choose to be in unions. A spokesman for
the governor said that the executive order would take effect immediately
but that the money from the union fees would be placed in escrow in
case the order was challenged in the courts.

Last week, in his
first State of the State address, Mr. Rauner called for the state to ban
political contributions by public employee unions to “the public
officials they are lobbying, and sitting across the bargaining table”
from, as well as allow local governments to enact “right to work” laws.
Those laws typically abolish the practice of making both union
membership and dues-paying automatic in unionized workplaces and have
often led to declines in union ranks.

“Bruce Rauner’s scheme to
strip the rights of state workers and weaken their unions by executive
order is a blatantly illegal abuse of power,” said Roberta Lynch,
executive director of Afscme Council 31. “Perhaps as a private equity
C.E.O., Rauner was accustomed to ignoring legal and ethical standards,
but Illinois is still a democracy and its laws have meaning.”

“It
is crystal clear by this action,” she continued, “that the governor’s
supposed concern for balancing the state budget is a paper-thin excuse
that can’t hide his real agenda: silencing working people and their
unions who stand up for the middle class.”

Afscme, which is set
to negotiate a contract with the state this year, is one of many unions
that backed Mr. Rauner’s Democratic opponent in last year’s
election.Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work
Committee, said Monday’s action could be seen as a natural progression
from recent victories in nearby states. “There will inevitably be a
union battle on this,” he said, “but we’re excited this is bringing this
issue to the forefront.”

Still, the order covers only state
employees, he said, and an expansion of the policy to both public and
private sector workplaces would be difficult.

“We’d like to see
Illinois become a right-to-work state,” he said. “Obviously, you need
more than just the governor to get that done.”

Some critics of
the governor said it was clear why he had chosen to make an executive
order rather than offer a legislative proposal. The state’s legislative
chambers are controlled by Democrats, many of whom have received union
support over the years. On Monday evening, the reaction from legislative
leaders seemed surprisingly tempered.

“Our legal staff is
reviewing the governor’s executive order regarding fair share,” said the
Senate president, John Cullerton, a Democrat. “At the same time, I look
forward to hearing the governor’s budget as we search for common ground
to address our fiscal challenges.”

Bob Bruno, director of the
labor education program at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, said the governor’s action was an aggression against
public unions in a state where organized labor’s influence runs deep.
That said, he questioned the legal justification for the measure and its
practical effect, noting that most eligible state employees are union
members.

“In principle, it’s a pretty serious assault. In terms
of impact, it remains to be seen because it’s a relatively small
percentage of the population that’s chosen fair share,” Mr. Bruno said.
“This is an assault on the institutional existence of the union in the
public sector, and these sorts of fights are historic fights and have
big impact.”

OKLAHOMA
CITY — With executions in Oklahoma on hold amid a constitutional review
of its lethal injection formula, Republican legislators are pushing to
make Oklahoma the first state to allow the use of nitrogen gas in
executions.

Two bills scheduled for hearings this week in
legislative committees would make death by “nitrogen hypoxia” a backup
method. Representative Mike Christian, an Oklahoma City Republican,
said: “You wouldn’t need a medical doctor to do it. It’s a lot more
practical. It’s efficient.”

The United States Supreme Court is
reviewing Oklahoma’s three-drug method in a challenge sparked by a
botched lethal injection last spring in which an inmate groaned and
writhed on the gurney before a problem was discovered with an
intravenous line.The case centers on whether the sedative
midazolam properly renders an inmate unconscious before the second and
third drugs are administered. Three scheduled lethal injections in
Oklahoma have been delayed pending the high court’s review.

Oklahoma
officials concede midazolam is not the preferred drug for executions,
but death penalty states have been forced to explore alternatives as
manufacturers of more effective drugs refuse to sell them for use in
lethal injections.

ST.
LOUIS — A Missouri inmate just hours away from execution is asking the
U.S. Supreme Court to step in, arguing that lethal drug could cause
unconstitutional pain and suffering.

The appeal was filed Tuesday
on behalf of Walter Timothy Storey. He is scheduled for lethal
injection at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday for killing a female neighbor in 1990.

Missouri
prison officials refuse to disclose details about how or if its
execution drug, pentobarbital, is tested. Storey's attorneys argue that
the secrecy makes it impossible to know if the drug will quickly work or
cause an unconstitutionally painful death.

The Missouri Attorney General's office says 12 executions performed with the same drug have been "rapid and painless."

If the court doesn't step in, Storey's execution will be the state's first in 2015.

The
Justice Department is pushing some of the biggest banks on Wall Street —
including, for the first time in decades, American institutions — to
plead guilty to criminal charges that they manipulated the prices of
foreign currencies.

In the final stages of a long-running
investigation into corruption in the world’s largest financial market,
federal prosecutors have recently informed Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup
that they must enter guilty pleas to settle the cases, according to
lawyers briefed on the matter. The pleas would be likely to carry a
symbolic stigma, if limited actual fallout, in handing felony
convictions to some of the world’s biggest banks.

Yet even as
those cases head toward negotiations over potential plea deals — a
development that has not been previously reported — additional currency
misconduct has surfaced in a New York state investigation, confidential
documents show. The documents, excerpts from online chat rooms reviewed
by The New York Times, suggest that banks designed electronic trading
platforms that effectively drove up the price of currencies sold to
clients. In the chats, replete with expletives and industry jargon,
employees described and even joked about how the platform would cancel
trades that ceased to be profitable for the bank.

The
Justice Department’s plea deals, if ultimately reached, would not cover
any wrongdoing that surfaces from Mr. Lawsky’s investigation.
Negotiations with the Justice Department are likely to center on which
entity will plead guilty: the bank’s parent company, or a subsidiary
that housed the misconduct. The banks, which have argued that the
wrongdoing was isolated to midlevel employees, prefer that a subsidiary
take the fall.

The currency case is expected to ensnare traders
but not top-level executives. As a result, it may add fuel to the
criticism that prosecutors have not charged one top executive on Wall
Street. Without charges to mollify the public anger over the financial
crisis, the recent cases have presented little more than a pyrrhic
victory for the Justice Department.

Still, the developments
underscore a broader reality on Wall Street of late: One investigation
begets another. With each settlement for money laundering, manipulating
interest rates or aiding tax fraud, new cases crop up, often unearthed
in the course of the previous investigation.

The currency
investigation would expand on those cases, which produced guilty pleas
only from foreign banks. In pursuing cases last year against those
foreign banks, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, prosecutors confronted the
popular belief that banks had grown so important to the economy that
they could not be charged.

After those deals set off few if any
practical repercussions — the stocks of the banks actually jumped
following the news — prosecutors in the currency case are now demanding
pleas from JPMorgan and Citigroup, the lawyers said, in addition to
Barclays of Britain and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The banks, before
entering a guilty plea for any entity, will likely seek assurances that
the charges would not prompt a revocation of their licenses or cost them
any major business lines. If the banks resist, the Justice Department
has warned that an indictment and ultimately a trial await.

For
the Justice Department, the currency case represents a last opportunity
to shape the white-collar legacy of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.,
who has announced plans to step down once his replacement is confirmed.
Blamed for the lack of criminal cases against Wall Street executives,
Mr. Holder has emphasized that “no financial institution, at home or
abroad, is too powerful to be held accountable for wrongdoing.”

A
Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did all of the
banks under investigation. The lawyers briefed on the investigations
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
discuss private settlement talks.

The Justice Department and the
banks, the lawyers said, will most likely take weeks or even months to
negotiate a settlement. The deals could be announced in close
succession, if not on the same day.

The currency investigation
began in earnest two years ago with the suspicion that traders across
Wall Street manipulated the foreign exchange market, pushing prices up
and down to suit their own holdings. Although foreign exchange is an
enormous global market, with more than $5 trillion changing hands each
day, it is one of the least regulated.

Banks eventually fired
dozens of traders implicated in the scheme. Authorities around the globe
scrambled to stake a claim to the investigation.

In November,
six banks sought to close the first chapter of the case, agreeing to pay
a combined $4.25 billion to settle with financial regulators in
Washington and Britain. The settlement, which included JPMorgan Chase,
Citigroup, the Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS and HSBC, exposed the way banks colluded to manipulate currencies through emails and online chat rooms.

“He’s
sat back in his chair… feet on desk… announcing to desk… that’s why I
got the bonus pool,” one trader remarked to a rival after they colluded
on a rate, earning, according to regulators, a profit of $513,000 on the
trade. Traders who collaborated to rig the market called themselves
“the Players” and “the Three Musketeers.”

On the eve of the
settlement, Barclays withdrew from the deal over concerns that it would
not completely resolve its liabilities. The bank had hoped that Mr.
Lawsky’s agency would join the pact.

Now that the Justice
Department has opened settlement talks in the case, demanding guilty
pleas for antitrust and fraud charges, Mr. Lawsky is likely to join.
Each agency will assess its own fines, the lawyers briefed on the matter
said.

The Justice Department might also pursue its own
investigation into the electronic trading platforms under scrutiny by
Mr. Lawsky, the lawyers said. Unlike the original currency
investigation, which centered on the behavior of individual traders who
altered currency prices to benefit their own positions, Mr. Lawsky’s
inquiry suspects a more systematic gaming of the currency markets
through electronic trading platforms.

Over the last decade, many
banks began to trade currencies through electronic platforms. Not all
such platforms were meant to benefit the banks at the client’s expense.

But
late last year, Mr. Lawsky’s agency began to scrutinize the platforms
at Deutsche Bank and Barclays, as Bloomberg News reported in December.

In
the confidential documents reviewed by The Times, it appeared that at
least one bank steered certain clients to its platform, which provided
the bank a moment to weigh its options in an otherwise high-speed
environment.

For example, once a client agreed to buy euros at a
certain price from a bank, the platform would detect whether the market
had suddenly moved in a way that made the trade less profitable for the
bank. The platform would then allow the bank to cancel the trade,
possibly setting up a chance for the bank to eventually process the
trade at a higher price.

In the online chat rooms, bank
employees mocked their clients for not detecting the setup. And in some
cases, when clients inquired about the cancellation, the banks falsely
blamed a technical glitch.

It
is important to remember that the hangings, burnings and dismemberments
of black American men, women and children that were relatively common
in this country between the Civil War and World War II were often public
events. They were sometimes advertised in newspapers and drew hundreds
and even thousands of white spectators, including elected officials and
leading citizens who were so swept up in the carnivals of death that
they posed with their children for keepsake photographs within arm’s
length of mutilated black corpses.These episodes of horrific, communitywide violence
have been erased from civic memory in lynching-belt states like
Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. But that will
change if Bryan Stevenson,
a civil rights attorney, succeeds in his mission to build markers and
memorials at lynching sites throughout the South as a way of forcing
communities and the country to confront an era of racial terror directly
and recognize the role that it played in shaping the current racial
landscape.

Mr. Stevenson’s organization, the Equal Justice Initiative, took a step in that direction on Tuesday when it released a report
that chronicles nearly 4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern
states from 1877 to 1950. The report focuses on what it describes as
“racial terror lynchings,” which were used to enforce Jim Crow laws and
racial segregation. Victims in these cases were often murdered without
being accused of actual crimes but for minor social transgressions that
included talking back to whites or insisting on fairness and basic
rights.

The report is the result of five years of hard work.
Researchers reviewed local newspapers, historical archives and court
records; interviewed local historians, survivors and victims’
descendants; and scrutinized contemporaneously published articles in
African-American newspapers, which took a closer interest in these
matters than the white press. In the end, researchers found at least 700
more lynchings in the 12 states than were previously reported,
suggesting that “racial terror lynching” was far more common than was
generally believed.

The report argues compellingly that the
threat of death by lynching was far more influential in shaping
present-day racial reality than contemporary Americans typically
understand. It argues that The Great Migration from the South, in which
millions of African-Americans moved North and West, was partly a forced
migration in which black people fled the threat of murder at the hands
of white mobs.It sees lynching as the precursor of modern-day racial
bias in the criminal justice system. The researchers argue, for example,
that lynching declined as a mechanism of social control as the Southern
states shifted to a capital punishment strategy, in which blacks began
more frequently to be executed after expedited trials. The legacy of
lynching was apparent in that public executions were still being used to
mollify mobs in the 1930s even after such executions were legally
banned.

Despite playing a powerful role in the shaping of
Southern society, the lynching era has practically disappeared from
public discourse. As the report notes: “Most Southern terror lynching
victims were killed on sites that remain unmarked and unrecognized. The
Southern landscape is cluttered with plaques, statues and monuments that
record, celebrate and lionize generations of American defenders of
white supremacy, including public officials and private citizens who
perpetrated violent crimes against black citizens during the era of
racial terror.”

Mr. Stevenson’s group makes the persuasive
argument that this history needs to be properly commemorated and more
widely discussed before the United States can fully understand the
causes and origins of the racial injustice that hobbles the country to
this day.

LOS
ANGELES — The container ships arrive here filled with appliances, toys
and apparel, auto parts, computer components and untold other products
from Asia — to head out to stores across America.

But a simmering
labor dispute between the longshoremen’s union and ship owners has
brought crippling delays here and to other West Coast seaports. And the
slowdown escalated this week as owners said they would suspend the
unloading of container and other cargo ships on four of the next five
days because of what they called “a strike with pay.”

The move
follows a similar two-day limit on work last weekend that angered many
port workers, who saw it as a ploy to punish them and increase pressure
to settle on a new labor contract after nine months of negotiations,
which continue with the aid of a federal mediator.

It seems
certain to worsen the congestion at the West Coast ports, which together
handle half the container traffic entering the United States, including
at the vast Los Angeles-Long Beach complex here and ports in Oakland,
Seattle and Tacoma.

Manufacturers and farmers who rely on timely and predictable trans-Pacific trade fear even more serious disruptions.

“The
continued intransigence by labor and management to reach a new contract
is unacceptable,” the National Retail Federation said in response to
the latest news. “This stalemate is hurting American businesses, their
employees and consumers.”

The federation called on the White House to push for a settlement.

Workers
and management offer diametrically opposed explanations for the delays.
The ship owners say that workers in some ports have significantly
slowed their work in the last few months, and that the union local here
in Southern California has hampered operations since November with new
limits on who may operate cranes.

For several weeks, though,
citing congestion in the yards, the owners have limited night-shift
activities, with no unloading of ships, reducing the nighttime payroll.

“The
employers are deliberately worsening the existing congestion crisis to
gain the upper hand at the bargaining table,” Robert McEllrath,
president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, said of
the restricted unloading.

The owners must pay wage premiums for
night shifts and time and a half for work on holidays and weekends — on a
base rate of about $36 per hour for many seasoned longshoremen. Under
the union contract, both Thursday (Lincoln’s Birthday) and Monday
(Washington’s Birthday) are holidays.

The owners are suspending
the unloading of ships on these two days as well as the weekend, but
will allow terminals to continue at their discretion with activities to
move containers from their yards onto trucks and trains.

Last
week, the owners made public what they called a generous contract offer.
On Wednesday, the Pacific Maritime Association, which is negotiating on
behalf of the ship owners, dominated by huge Chinese, Danish, Taiwanese
and other companies, said the longshoremen’s union had responded to
that offer “with demands they knew we could not meet,” in particular a
demand for a unilateral right to fire arbitrators when the contract
ends.

The statement added, “What they’re doing amounts to a
strike with pay, and we will reduce the extent to which we pay premium
rates for such a strike.”

On Wednesday, 14 container ships stood
at anchor outside the conjoined ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Newly arrived ships have been waiting a week or two each before they can
enter a terminal where looming hammerhead cranes will heft their
cargoes onto shore.

Until last fall, container ships, which have
carefully scripted schedules, virtually never had to anchor offshore
here at the five-mile-wide harbor that takes in 33 percent of the
nation’s containerized imports, said Capt. J. Kip Louttit, executive
director of The Maritime Exchange, a private group that monitors ship
movements here. With unloading activities suspended, the number waiting
for a berth will climb, he said.

The businesses that depend on
Pacific trade for parts, products or sales are starting to feel the
pinch. California citrus growers have lost $500 million in export
business since November because containers now sit for an intolerable 10
days at the pier before being loaded, according to California Citrus
Mutual, a trade association in Exeter, Calif.

Last weekend, the
owners, in a surprise move, also temporarily suspended the unloading of
ships. They said they did so because they were tired of paying overtime
wages for sluggish work and because they had to focus on clearing out a
backlog of containers in overflowing yards.

The union, in turn,
hired a small plane and distributed aerial photographs showing empty
tracts in the purportedly clogged yards.

“They are trying to
create a situation to focus pain on longshoremen,” Richard Montez, a
certified crane operator, said when he heard about the latest cutbacks.
“They just don’t want to pay overtime dollars.”

”Instead of
trying to ease the situation and get back to the norm, they’re causing
more grief,” he said. “I have a family, I want to work.”

In the
case of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, the owners say a November
decision by the union local to stop some 500 experienced, but
uncertified, yard-crane operators from filling that linchpin role is to
blame for the delays. The union says it made the decision for safety
reasons, while the owners call it an indirect slowdown.

“There
are not enough crane operators, period, to work continuously as we have
in the past,” James C. McKenna, president and chief negotiator of the
maritime association, said on Tuesday. On a typical day, the association
says, the union provides far fewer operators than employers want,
constricting all operations.

In one of many clashing narratives,
union leaders deny this, saying they have men and women qualified to
meet any work demands and that many certified crane operators are not
even working full time.

“There’s no logical reason not to be
working seven days a week around the clock,” said Bobby Olvera Jr.,
president of I.L.W.U. Local 13 here, which has 2,000 members.

The
owners, Mr. McKenna said, had agreed to raise the base hourly wage for
senior skilled workers, now $35.68, to $40.68 over five years, a 3
percent annual increase, with many of them also receiving considerable
overtime and shift premiums. The owners would also continue to provide a
no co-pay health plan and generous pensions.

The union has declined to discuss the negotiations.

Mr.
McKenna has warned darkly of an “imminent collapse” of port operations,
causing wide havoc and driving more shippers to other routes.

The
union calls that a threat of a lockout, which occurred in 2002,
prompting federal intervention under the Taft-Hartley Act. But the
union, which insists that the parties are near agreement, has made no
plans for a strike, which last happened in 1971.

Mr. McKenna said
he was not forecasting a lockout but a system becoming so gridlocked
that owners would have to suspend operations.

“A lockout is a
last resort, nobody wins,” he said. “But at some point in time this
thing will grind itself to a stop, and I wouldn’t take anything off the
table.”

Noah Smith contributed reporting.

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12) Smoking’s Toll on Health Is Even Worse Than Previously Thought, a Study Finds

A
new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the
toll taken by tobacco in the United States. Before the study, smoking
was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer.

The
new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who
were followed for 10 years. In addition to the well-known hazards of
lung cancer,
artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, the
researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased
risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by
inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously
attributed to tobacco.

Even though people are already barraged
with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is
important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news.“The
smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how
smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy
making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the
American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.”

In
an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new
findings showed that officials in the United States had substantially
underestimated the effect smoking has on public health. He said smokers,
particularly those who depend on Medicaid, had not been receiving enough help to quit.

About 42 million Americans smoke —
15 percent of women and 21 percent of men — according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. Research has shown that their death
rates are two to three times higher than those of people who have never
smoked, and that on average, they die more than a decade before
nonsmokers. Smokers are more than 20 times as likely as nonsmokers to
die of lung cancer. Poor people and those with less formal education are the most likely to smoke.

Mr.
Carter said he had been inspired to dig deeper into the causes of death
in smokers after taking an initial look at data from five large health
surveys being conducted by other researchers. The participants were
421,378 men and 532,651 women 55 and older, including nearly 89,000
current smokers.

As expected, death rates were higher among the
smokers. But diseases known to be caused by tobacco accounted for only
83 percent of the excess deaths in people who smoked.

“I thought,
‘Wow, that’s really low,’ ” Mr. Carter said. “We have this huge cohort.
Let’s get into the weeds, cast a wide net and see what is killing
smokers that we don’t already know.”

The research was paid for by
the American Cancer Society, and Mr. Carter worked with scientists from
four universities and the National Cancer Institute.

The study
was observational, meaning that it looked at people’s habits, like
smoking, and noted statistical correlations between their behavior and
their health. Correlation does not prove a cause-and-effect
relationship, so this kind of research is not considered as strong as
experiments in which participants are assigned at random to treatments
or placebos and then compared. But people cannot ethically be instructed
to smoke for a study, so a lot of the data on smoking’s effects on
people comes from observational studies.

Analyzing deaths among
the participants from 2000 to 2011, the researchers found that, compared
with people who had never smoked, smokers were about twice as likely to
die from infections, kidney disease, respiratory ailments not
previously linked to tobacco, and hypertensive heart disease, in which high blood pressure leads to heart failure.
Smokers were also six times more likely to die from a rare illness
caused by insufficient blood flow to the intestines.Mr. Carter said he
had confidence in the findings because, biologically, it made sense that
those conditions were related to tobacco. Smoking can weaken the immune
system, increasing the risk of infection, he said. It is also known to
cause diabetes, high blood pressure
and artery disease, all of which can lead to kidney problems. Artery
disease can also choke off the blood supply to the intestines. Lung
damage from smoke, combined with increased vulnerability to infection,
can lead to multiple respiratory illnesses.

Two other
observations supported the findings, he said. One was that the more
heavily a person smoked, the greater the added risks. The second was
that among former smokers, the risks diminished over time. In general,
such effects, known as a dose response, suggest that an observed
correlation is more than a coincidence.

The study also found small increases in the risks of breast and prostate cancer
among smokers. Mr. Carter said those findings were not as strong as the
others, adding that additional research could help determine whether
there were biological mechanisms that would support a connection.

KANSAS
CITY, Kan. — In November, shortly after Gov. Sam Brownback won
re-election, experts forecast that the state would bring in $1 billion
less than expected over the next two years. He responded by cutting
state agency budgets and proposing the transfer of funds among various
state accounts. In December came news of a revenue slump, falling to
$15.1 million below estimates. Mr. Brownback proposed increasing taxes
on liquor and cigarettes, slowed reductions in the income tax and
changed the way money was distributed to public schools.

But the
governor’s budget headaches have continued: January receipts fell $47.2
million short of predictions, and Mr. Brownback has responded by cutting
funding for public schools and higher education by a combined $44.5
million.

The move has education officials across the state
seething. Here, the Kansas City Public School District has already
endured $45 million in lost state revenue since 2009, said Cynthia Lane,
the superintendent. Mr. Brownback’s cut of 1.5 percent to public school
funding statewide would amount to a loss of $1.3 million in her
district, she said.

That comes as the state has still not paid
the district $3 million for capital expenses required under a formula
intended to help poor districts. Mr. Brownback has asked legislators to
change that formula, and they have proposed a bill that would reduce the
district’s aid by another $1.4 million, Ms. Lane said.

“There
is really very little room in reducing our expenditures without directly
impacting students and the progress we’re making,” she said.

The
cuts come amid a larger budget picture in which the governor has been
forced to fill a $344 million budget gap for the fiscal year ending in
June; a shortfall of nearly $600 million has been forecast for the
fiscal year starting July 1. The Republican-controlled Legislature is
said to be working to find a way to address that.

Mr. Brownback’s
Democratic opponents and some moderate Republicans blame the state’s
fickle budget situation on the deep income tax cuts that the governor
has ushered into law in recent years.

“I can only expect that
February revenues will be down, and then likely March revenues will be
down,” said Senator Anthony Hensley, the Democratic leader. “It’s just a
continuation of the same old song, basically, that the Brownback tax
cuts have decimated the general fund.”

The governor and his
supporters say that the state needs to operate more efficiently and find
more sustainable ways to finance its largest costs: education, Medicaid and public employee pensions.

On
Tuesday, after signing the bill that allowed for the cuts and cash
transfers to fill this year’s deficit, Mr. Brownback again urged
lawmakers to rewrite the formula used to provide aid to the neediest
school districts. If the Legislature saves money by doing so, he
asserted, it could restore the $28 million in cuts to K-12 public
schools that he called for this month. The governor has also asked
lawmakers to overhaul the means for financing schools in general.

“Kansas
has good schools, and we continue to invest in education,” Eileen
Hawley, the governor’s spokeswoman, wrote in an email, adding that
public school funding for the current fiscal year was up $177 million
from the previous one. “We need a timeout in the school funding wars so
the Legislature can develop a new formula that reflects real-world costs
and puts dollars in classrooms with real students to improve academic
achievement.”

But the increases in school funding have mostly
gone to things unrelated to classroom instruction, like building
expenses and pensions, said Mark Tallman, the associate executive
director for the Kansas Association of School Boards.

Another
complication is added by a lawsuit brought by a group of school
districts and parents asserting that the state has violated the
Constitution by not providing adequate funding for education. In
December, a state district court said that Kansas schools were not
adequately financed, a decision that was appealed before the state
Supreme Court. If the court orders the state to increase spending, it
could conflict with the cuts that the governor has ordered.

Some districts worry that their reserves might dry up.

The
more than $400,000 that Salina Public Schools have been forced to cut
in response to the governor’s reductions is being replaced with money
from the district’s reserves. But that won’t last forever, said William
D. Hall, the superintendent, who said he was worried that additional
cuts would come out of the Capitol.

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14) Residents of Brooklyn Housing Project Stay Wary After Officer Is Indicted
"But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang — coming
after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island declined to
indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men — only
underscored how capricious justice could be."

Akai Gurley carried no weapon, they said. All he did was step into a darkened stairwell.

And
the police officer who shot him? Time to bring him to justice, the men
and women of the Louis H. Pink Houses in Brooklyn said over and over on
Tuesday evening, after learning that Officer Peter Liang, whose bullet
killed Mr. Gurley in November, would be indicted on charges including second-degree manslaughter.

“He needs to answer to the family, to the community,” Maritza Ruiz, 45, said. “There’s a young man dead.”

Officer
Liang, 27, shot Mr. Gurley while patrolling a stairwell at the Pink
Houses in East New York less than 18 months into his career with the
Police Department.

Officer Liang was arraigned on Wednesday
afternoon. Shortly before 7 a.m., he stepped out of his home in
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Wearing a dark suit and gray tie, he made his way
into a waiting S.U.V. and did not respond to questions from a
reporter.Like other residents interviewed on Tuesday at the Pink Houses,
Ms. Ruiz said she could not stop thinking about how the officer, by
drawing his gun, had endangered untold lives in a building where many
residents take the stairs because the elevator is unreliable.

“It
could’ve been me; it could’ve been my daughter,” she said. “You don’t
walk into a building with a gun loaded where a lot of innocent people
live.”

But for several residents, the indictment of Officer Liang
— coming after grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and on Staten Island
declined to indict white officers in other deaths of unarmed black men —
only underscored how capricious justice could be.

How could they have faith in the system, they asked, if it seemed to value their lives only intermittently?

“How
can you be lenient on this one, and hard on the other one?” said Robert
Martin, 46, who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant but was passing the Pink
Houses on Tuesday. “The other cops who shot people should get the same.”

For
Gregory Rosario, 24, the confusion about what exactly had happened in
the stairwell made it all the more ironic that Officer Liang, a
Chinese-American, was the only officer who would face charges.

“You
think if the officer’s not a minority, he would get indicted?” said Mr.
Rosario, who grew up in the Pink Houses. “If he was Caucasian, he
wouldn’t be indicted. In Eric Garner, they had everything on the table
and they didn’t do anything. Here there’s no video, no proof, but they
indicted him.”

“I
just don’t understand: Why would he draw his weapon like that?” Adam
Davis, 28, said. “He should never draw his gun out if he wasn’t sure
there was a problem.”

Mr. Gurley’s death has brought spikes of
noisy bustle to the Pink Houses — the bright lights of television news
vans, the roar of protesters — but it has also left the housing project
quieter, making children afraid to take the stairs or play outside, Mr.
Davis said.

Kamala Crew, 43, a seamstress, said she sympathized with Officer Liang.

“I’m
sorry for who died, but he was a rookie, and he’s not accustomed to
this lifestyle,” she said. “This is so sad. I know cops that did worse
than this and got away scot-free.”

Ultimately, many of her
neighbors said, the indictment could never resolve the broader issues of
race and police violence that have defined their debates and aroused
their community for many months now.

All the indictment represented, they said, was the first step toward closing the case of Mr. Gurley, their friend.

“He was a good guy,” Margarita Robles, 40, said. “Would I say this is justice? Yes.”

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15) Dutchess County to Pay Brooklyn Native $7.5 Million for Wrongful Murder Conviction

The prize for this fight turns out to be $7.5 million, but Dewey Bozella did not win it in a boxing ring.

In 2009, a State Supreme Court judge found that the Brooklyn-born Mr. Bozella had been wrongfully convicted of the murder in 1977 of a 92-year-old woman in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

During
his 26 years in prison Mr. Bozella sharpened his boxing skills, became
the light heavyweight champion of Sing Sing and, after his release, won his only professional match in Los Angeles, at age 52.

As
a free man, Mr. Bozella sued Dutchess County — which includes
Poughkeepsie — and its officials in Federal District Court in White
Plains for wrongfully locking him up, seeking $25 million in
restitution. Hours before a jury was to be picked for a civil trial in
early January, the county agreed to a settlement
whose sum was not revealed at the time.On Monday evening, the County
Legislature voted to authorize the payment of $7.5 million to Mr.
Bozella, now 55. It did not, however, admit any fault or liability on
the part of any of its officials.

Mr. Bozella’s lawyer, Ross E.
Firsenbaum, had contended that prosecutors and police officers had
withheld four pieces of significant evidence from the defense that
pointed to another man as the murderer.

To pay for the
settlement, the county voted to issue bonds that will be paid back over
five years by county taxpayers. The $7.5 million would otherwise have
been a big chunk of a county budget that for 2015 has been estimated at
roughly $169 million.

Neither Mr. Bozella nor his lawyers would
comment on the award because the wrongful incarceration lawsuit will not
technically be withdrawn until the money is turned over, which could
take several more weeks. Because Mr. Bozella’s lawyers at the firm
WilmerHale took his case as a pro bono project, the entire $7.5 million
will be paid to Mr. Bozella.

Mr. Bozella was twice convicted — in
1983 and at a 1990 retrial — of beating and suffocating the woman, Emma
Crasper, when she returned home from a night of church bingo. He was
sentenced to life. A judge later found that prosecutors relied on the
testimony of two men who changed their stories to get favorable
treatment for their own crimes.

The judge also found that
prosecutors did not turn over to the defense crucial evidence, including
a neighbor’s account of hearing rustling in the alleyway near a window
where the police had found the fingerprint of a man named Donald Wise
who had been convicted of killing an elderly woman in similar fashion.
Prosecutors always contended that Mr. Bozella had walked through the
building’s front door.

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16) How Mortgage Fraud Made the Financial Crisis Worse
By Binyamin Appelbaum

The
financial crisis was caused in part by widespread fraud, which may seem
like an obvious point. But it remains surprisingly controversial.

President
Obama and other public officials, seeking to explain why so few people
have gone to jail, have argued in recent years that much of what
happened in the go-go years before the crisis was reprehensible but,
alas, legal.

You will not be surprised to learn that many
financial executives share this view — at least the part about the
legality of their actions — and that a fair number of academics have
come forward to defend the honor of lenders.

New academic
research therefore deserves attention for providing evidence that the
lending industry’s conduct during the housing boom often broke the law.
The paper by the economists Atif Mian of Princeton University and Amir
Sufi of the University of Chicago focuses on a particular kind of fraud: the practice of overstating a borrower’s income in order to obtain a larger loan.

They
found that incomes reported on mortgage applications in ZIP codes with
high rates of subprime lending increased much more quickly than incomes
reported on tax returns in those same ZIP codes between 2002 and 2005.

“Englewood
and Garfield Park are two of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago,”
they wrote. “Englewood and Garfield Park were very poor in 2000, saw
incomes decline from 2002 to 2005, and they remain very poor
neighborhoods today.” Yet between 2002 and 2005, the annualized increase
in income reported on home purchase mortgage applications in those
areas was 7.7 percent, strongly suggesting borrowers’ incomes were
overstated.

The study is particularly noteworthy because in a study published this year, three economists argued the pattern was a result of gentrification rather than fraud.
“Home buyers had increasingly higher income than the average residents
in an area,” wrote Manuel Adelino of Duke University, Antoinette Schoar
of M.I.T. and Felipe Severino of Dartmouth.

The three economists
also argued that lending in lower-income areas played only a small role
in the crisis. Most defaults were in wealthier neighborhoods, where
income overstatement was less common.

“The mistake that the banks
made was not that they over-levered crazily the poor in a systemic
fashion,” Ms. Schoar said. “The banks were not understanding or not
wanting to understand that they were increasing the leverage of the
country as a whole. They were forgetting or ignoring that house prices
can drop.”

The new paper by Mr. Mian and Mr. Sufi is a rebuttal.
Their basic point is that the incomes reported on applications should
not be taken seriously. They note that income reported to the I.R.S. in
these ZIP codes fell in subsequent years, a pattern inconsistent with
gentrification. Moreover, the borrowers defaulted at very high rates,
behaving like people who borrowed more than they could afford. And the
pattern is particular to areas of concentrated subprime lending. There
is no income gap in ZIP codes where people mostly took conventional
loans.

The paper also notes the wealth of
other sources that have accumulated since the crisis showing the
prevalence of fraud in subprime lending. (I was given an early version
of the paper to read and provided the professors with some of the
examples cited.)

In a study published last year,
for example, researchers examined the 721,767 loans made by one unnamed
bank between 2004 and 2008 and found widespread income falsification in
its low-documentation loans, sometimes called liar loans by real estate
agents.

More colorfully, the journalist Michael Hudson told the
story of the “Art Department” at an Ameriquest branch in Los Angeles in
“The Monster,” his 2010 book about the mortgage industry during the
boom: “They used scissors, tape, Wite-Out and a photocopier to fabricate
W-2s, the tax forms that indicate how much a wage earner makes each
year. It was easy: Paste the name of a low-earning borrower onto a W-2
belonging to a higher-earning borrower and, like magic, a bad loan
prospect suddenly looked much better. Workers in the branch equipped the
office’s break room with all the tools they needed to manufacture and
manipulate official documents. They dubbed it the ‘Art Department.’ ”

Mr.
Mian and Mr. Sufi argue that large numbers of early subprime defaults
helped to catalyze the crisis, a case they made at length in their
influential 2014 book, “House of Debt.”

The
prevalence of income overstatement is sometimes presented as evidence
that borrowers cheated lenders. No doubt that happened in some cases.
But it is not a likely explanation for the broad pattern. It is
far-fetched to think that most borrowers would have known what lies to
tell, or how, without inside help.

And mortgage companies had not
only the means to orchestrate fraud, but they also had the motive. Mr.
Mian and Mr. Sufi have argued in previous papers that the mortgage boom
was driven by an expansion of credit rather than a rise in demand for
loans. It makes sense that companies eager to increase lending would
have also developed ways to manufacture ostensibly qualified borrowers.

We
do not have a comprehensive accounting of the responsibility for each
instance of fraud — how many by brokers, by borrowers, by both together.

Some
fraud was clearly collaborative: Brokers and borrowers worked together
to game the system. “I am confident at times borrowers were coached to
fill out applications with overstated incomes or net worth to meet the
minimum underwriting requirements,” James Vanasek, the chief risk
officer at Washington Mutual from 1999 to 2005, told Senate investigators in 2011.

In other cases, it is clear that the borrowers were in the dark. Some of the nation’s largest lenders, including Countrywide, Wells Fargo and Ameriquest, overstated the incomes of borrowers — without telling them — to qualify them for larger loans than they could afford.